Ingress: After the activation code, tips and cheats

As I posted 3 days ago I received my activation code for the new Augmented Reality Game that Google introduced a couple of weeks ago.

I have already met guys walking around like zombies trying to spot the portals. Also many tech people talk about the game because of the marketing strategy that Google has followed. Many of them beg for an activation code…

So…. some tips for the ones that already hold an activation code…

First of all, STOP fooling around and just read the info that Google offers (http://support.google.com/ingress?hl=en). It is soooo simple to read a couple of lines instead of asking all over the internet what the rules are.

If you have read those 10 paragraphs, here is some more info for you

If you use the easy way by just touching the enemy portal and then selecting Fire XMP you just destroy your valuable heavy weapons. Choose the right weapon for the right job by selecting OPS->Weapons-><the right XMP>->Fire.

Play together with others, don’t be a selfish bastard. Use the chat. If you reach a high level you will not be able to continue on your own! There are limits in the game for the lonely riders.

It is better to build some portals which you will recharge regularly and leave others that will get dead within 10 days (if you didn’t read Google’s guildelines I bet that you are now wondering what I am talking about). This is the only quick way to get AP easily.

There is a serious problem in the game… in you are not careful you might build a Control Field covering other portals of yours. Then you will have to wait 10 days for your portal to go dead because there is no way to destroy a link or a portal of yours. By the way… if you know what you do that might not be bad….

Check your area for portals through the link http://www.ingress.com/intel . Don’t be a fool walking around your city trying to find portals.

Use this link Google Docs to find passcodes . Through the passcodes you can get AP, XP and every kind of Weapons/Resonators. I found it from this Google Plus page by Derek Ross. Once more… don’t be a fool writing them in your tablet/smartphone, just copy-paste them in the Intel Page (previous bullet).

Some bad points for Google…

There is the Niantic Project page in which Goople puts new info every day that has no connection with the flow of the game – mainly because there is no flow. Ok… take the activation code, start playing, get portals, do whatever, find “Classified Documents” and then get on that website and then you will realize that there is no connection. Also, the scenario is a bad copy of Flash Forward and Fringe TV Series. As an example, the blackboard of the Niantic Project website has the connected dots idea from the Flash Forward TV Series (and the timeline).

On the other hand the map needs a lot of work. Did they check the points of interest that they have put on the map? Do they really care? In my city there are portals in areas that it is impossible for someone to reach (with the limit of 50 meters). There are also areas that heavy municipality works take place so proper people can only get at about 200 meters from the portal. I also read at the Ingress chat a guy writing to someone else “you can reach that portal from that corner without paying a ticket” because it seems that the portal is in the area of a museum (hihihihi). Someone might reply to my previous comment “Dude, this is an Augmented Reality game”. Then I would reply… “Dude, why is the main museum of my city appearing as o portal two kilometers away from its original position?”. Then I would continue… “By the way, in the real world this statue is at this specific spot, why does it appear in the game as five different portals?”

Finally lets get to the more technical issues:

The users can’t use the application and the Intel page at the same time. If you use the Intel page and then try to use the app you get an error saying that the app can’t login securely. If you use the app and then try to open the Intel page, then the Intel page says that your account is not activated for Ingress. This is not a problem for the majority of the players since no one would be in both places trying to reach the portals.

There are cases that app gets stuck continuously at the loading page without a reason. The solution is to delete all the cached files and start the app again.

The application is really far from being stable. My tablet has rebooted 3 times because of the application. The maps don’t get redrawn some times and the application freezes veeery often.

Overall, I would consider the application to be an alpha in terms of software….. not a beta….

In the end…. I have being testing the game for the last 3 days. It took me about 4 working hours – in total – to find the details about the game, test it and then conquer the whole city reaching level 5 (the top level is 8). The city is big and I am the owner -myself- of almost 60% of the portals (they are in total about 70 portals), I estimate that there are about 10 people holding a beta account in the city, 6 of which are members of the enemy Fraction (these three days only one member of my Fraction was active). If I would want to I would be able to be the owner of the rest of the portals too… I will not ruin the game for the others so I put a limit. I don’t find it to be normal for one player to be able to conquer all the portals in such a way. Google has to consider using better ways to make the game fair for all the players. There are cheats for every game out there and ways to mitigate the use of them.

I will not give any more technical details about the Ingress game and my strategy from this point forward and there is no way to give info on how to conquer the world. The version provided by Google is a beta version so I find it normal for the users to make their tests too.